I had a UTC controlled clock in my shack. The drawback: It showed Central European Time, as controlled by DCF77, the time transmitter that is controlled by the Physikalisch-Technischen Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany. So, when I made a QSO, I used to look at the analog clock, had to convert the time to digital, substract 1 or 2 hours depending on the summer savings and then I had the time. Of course you can buy a cheap digital clock and set it to UTC, but nothing beats an atomic-clock synchronised digital clock, right?

The M.A.S., (Minimal Art Session) is a contest which was founded by Dr. Harmut "Hal" Weber, DJ7ST (SK). The idea is to encourage Hams to build and operate a rig consisting of a minimum of components.

making the fingerplates was a hell of a job. I bought a 2 square feet of brass sheet, 0,8mm thick. Cut some pieces and sprayed it with Positiv20 (the stuff that is used for making ordinary PCB light sensitive).

Dear Visitors, really sorry to tell you that I only just found out that the mail function of the website was not working! This due to the fact that my ISP does not allow direct connections to the outside world using port 25.

The transmitter is mechanically easier, but a bigger challenge electronically. Various inductances have to be calculated for 6 bands; the crystal circuit and the grid resonance circuit.